Buttery goodness?

Thus far every recipe has lived up to our blog’s semi-edible title, would today’s cocktail time be the day we break that streak, puh-leeze, god?! We went tame for today’s menu, hoping for some edible snacks because Liz was starving. We started with halving the recipes for chili cheese slices and mini cheese and olive calzones, because who really wants to eat/waste 4 chili cheese slices and 4 mini calzones? The chili cheese slices are flat, unrolled Pillsbury crescent rolls topped with Hormel chili, red onions, olives and cheese. These were not horrible; however, they were not good either. Liz said they were too bland, which some of the online reviews supported. I felt like my mouth was drying up from the inordinate amount of sodium put in Hormel chili and crescent rolls. Overall it wasn’t a horrible recipe (Liz went back for seconds) but the marriage of the buttery crescent rolls and chili was too off-putting to ever serve this.

As for the mini cheese and olive calzones, which consist of ricotta, Mexican cheese, olives and Italian seasoning wrapped in crescent dough…oy vey, it felt like my mouth was being all-out assaulted by Mussolini...if Mussolini ever shoved Italian seasoning down the Allies’ throats...which I don't think he did...which is perhaps why he lost in WWII (don't judge me, I just wanted to pick some horrible Italian analogy). First, why is Italian seasoning even a necessary herb bled to have in a kitchen?! Second, that nastiness is Potent! Every bite was painful. I imagine if you drastically lowered the seasoning and used pizza dough rather than crescent dough they would be an okay snack, but this blog is about staying true to the recipes so unfortunately, Sandy is 0-2 thus far.

The Butter Martini was not much of a savior. Equal parts vanilla vodka, pineapple juice with a splash of butterscotch schnapps and Chambord (which was in the recipe, but not the show) was not that appealing. Liz said she liked it, but the vanilla and pineapple together didn’t sit well with me. It wasn’t good enough for either of us to want another so we moved on to the Melon-tini: equal parts vodka, pineapple juice and a splash of melon liqueur. It reminded us of our childhood Ecto-Cooler, but didn’t taste nearly as awesome. Thus far I am disappointed by Aunt Sandy’s cocktails. For an alcohol-loving woman who claims cocktail time is the best time of the day (amen, Sandy!), these drinks are completely unsatisfactory. Although, perhaps assuming Sandy has standards is assuming too much.

For dessert we made the grape and ricotta crostata. How can you screw up a pie crust, ricotta and grape jelly? Oh, perhaps by requiring 1½ cups grape jelly! It oozed everywhere in the oven! And the taste was way too….grapey?

Overall cocktail time was 0-5 on the edible score board…or 5-0 on the semi-edible score board. I’m going to choose to look at it as 5-0. That looks much more promising.